Travel harpsichord

A problem that has repeatedly occupied inventive minds is how to design keyboard instruments that are easily transportable. Some constructions from the 16th to 18th centuries, like fretted clavichords or Italian harpsichords (without a case), could be carried by one or maybe two people and thus quite closely aligned with this idea inherently. Small organs were traditionally distinguished by these exact characteristics into two types: the portative (from Latin portare, meaning to carry; thus portable) and the positive (from Latin ponere, meaning to place; movable). In contrast, the large north-Alpine harpsichords were pieces of furniture with respectable dimensions and therefore could only be moved with difficulty. It is therefore quite plausible that perhaps the most creative development of a portable harpsichord came from a French harpsichord maker.

In 1700, Jean Marius presented the Académie in Paris with a folding harpsichord, which would henceforth become the model for travel harpsichords. He divided the instrument lengthwise into three equally wide parts, which, when placed side by side, formed a single-manual harpsichord. The length of the middle and treble sections was chosen such that they could be folded together at their narrowest back edges (made possible by a special hinge) and then together took up the same dimensions as the bass box with the deepest strings. When stacked, this created a lightweight, all-around closed sturdy wooden case, capable of withstanding the jolts in the luggage compartment of a poorly sprung stagecoach, yet could be unfolded back into a ready-to-play harpsichord with only a few maneuvers—but not entirely, because after the shaking and rattling of a journey on barely paved roads, it was first expected to require thorough retuning.

Marius employed an invention by a colleague for this problem. The Maître de la Musique Estienne Loulié presented the Academy just a year before Marius with a tuning device he had devised for harpsichords, a monochord with a single key and a harpsichord jack, whose string was shortened with a movable bridge to represent each note of the tempered octave. The instrument depicted here from the Musée de la Musique in Paris features such a tuning aid modeled after Loulié's design. However necessary it might have been, this tuning aid is only present in some, presumably particularly expensive, travel harpsichords by Marius.